


thin ice

by jaimelanniser



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-19
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2020-01-16 13:52:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18522868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaimelanniser/pseuds/jaimelanniser
Summary: In which Lady is still alive and betrays the Stark Code by immediately becoming obsessed with Jaime. Sansa isn't pleased.





	1. Chapter 1

The betrayal started like this: a paced circling of the man standing in the Winterfell Great Hall awaiting his judgment.

It mirrored the pacing Lady had done around Littlefinger, around the Umber boy and the Karstark girl and any other man or woman who presented themselves to the Lady of Winterfell.

Sansa knew that it aroused whispers, mutterings, and suspicion, how implicitly she trusted her direwolf. How quick she was to make up her mind after a bristling of her pet’s fur, a baring of her teeth, or a gentle bow of her head before she padded back to her master, back legs bending under her massive body. But Lady had instincts beyond human, and they never erred.

Jaime Lannister had his hands at his sides, jaw set, while Lady crept up towards him with a low quiet grumble – almost too low, but Sansa was acutely aware of it, and it made her breath catch in her own throat.

There was an unsettled silence in the Hall after everybody had said their piece to and about him. Northern Lords loathed him by name. The Targaryen queen had not passed his sentence because it wasn’t hers to pass, as Sansa didn’t hesitate to remind her. This was  _her_  home.

Tyrion had spoken up for his brother, but that surprised nobody. So had Lady Brienne. And then, surprising  _everybody_ , Bran. Or rather, the Three Eyed Raven.

It was painful, from time to time, how obvious it was that there was little to nothing left of her brother.

All the while, Lady stood motionless at her side, staring, watching, waiting, until silence settled once more and she was able to go inspect the newcomer. Around and around she went, with Sansa’s heart beating faster and Jaime Lannister’s shadowed green eyes staring right at her.

And then, after sniffing and sniffing, Lady’s rumbling stopped and in one swift movement she dropped down to sit and knocked her head against the man’s hand.

The silence continued to stretch, and Sansa sat up a little straighter in her seat, lips parted in surprise as she continued to hold Ser Jaime’s now slightly alarmed gaze. “Lady,” she called, voice clipped. The direwolf’s ears perked towards her, but she didn’t move.

Eyes shifted towards her, and Sansa  _refused_  to flush. This had never once happened before. It was clear that the Kingslayer had her wolf’s approval, but to  _stay?_  “Lady,” she tried again, a little more sharply, and let her hand drop down next to her to beckon her over.

It took a few seconds, as if the wolf was being  _stubborn_  about it, before she tilted her muzzle into the golden hand and stood back up to pad towards her. The embarrassment would not cripple her. Lady safely at her side once more, Sansa let her fingers bury into the soft grey fur and held her head high. “You’ll be weary from your journey, Ser Jaime. One of our servants will escort you to your rooms.”

And that was that.

–

Day turned into night, and Sansa managed to convince herself that it had been a lapse of judgment. Perhaps she’d not fed enough last night, and Lady was feeling resentful. Perhaps Jaime had picked up a wild rabbit on his way here and he had it in his pocket. Perhaps a lot of things.

Except that supper was served – not a feast, as they were being sensible with rations – and as Sansa walked into the Hall with her sister, the wolf paused for a split second before veering off towards the far end, where the golden haired man sat alone with a bowl of stew in front of him.

“Hello, again,” he greeted the wolf under his breath, lifting his good hand cautiously until Lady slid under it, tail _wagging_ from side to side. Green eyes met blue as she approached, fingers digging into her palms at this blatantly ridiculous display of behaviour from her wolf. “Lady Sansa.”

“Ser Jaime.”

The man had a hint of a smirk playing at his lips, but he hid it carefully. “This is the friendliest direwolf I believe I’ve ever come across.”

“Isn’t she the only direwolf you’ve ever come across?” Sansa challenged, unable to help her irritated tone of voice. Just because she’d granted him a pardon, and sanctuary, didn’t mean she had to  _like_  him. “Lady, come.”

Again, the wolf didn’t move, and Jaime’s hand started slowly stroking her fur as he looked at her, glancing up at Sansa briefly before leaning back to the wolf, as if sharing a secret. “I’m treading on thin ice around here already, Lady. I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t give Lady Sansa any more reason to exile me.”

The  _nerve_  of him. Sansa had half a mind to storm off, leave the wolf wherever she wanted to stay and chalk it up to insanity. But this was  _Lady_. Her beloved direwolf. The only one who had been with her through  _everything_. The wolf whimpered quietly, looking up at Sansa, mouth open happily.

And Seven Hells, what was she supposed to do? Drag her off?

Composing herself, she motioned to the chair across from his at the table. “May I join you for dinner?”

It was his turn to be startled, and he stared at her with something akin to disbelief. “It would be my honour.” The words were rehearsed. Second nature. How many times had he said them in his lifetime?

There had been a time where Sansa would have swooned at the thought of sharing a meal with Jaime Lannister.

Now, he was just a man. A man without a hand and with nothing left to lose, coming to fight the army of the dead and steal her pet.

–

If Sansa had thought (or hoped) that this was a temporary obsession, then she was very much mistaken.

Days bled into nights that bled into days, each seemingly shorter than the next, and while Lady still followed her around like a trustworthy shadow, slept at the foot of her bed, and behaved beautifully, every time Jaime Lannister was in the near vicinity, she lost all common sense.

What the man had ever done to merit such unwarranted affection, Sansa did not know. But the wolf was undoubtedly under his spell. Would seek him out in a crowded room and bound over to lap at his good fingertips whenever they crossed paths. And Sansa would have to blush furiously and pretend that she wasn’t at all altered by the situation.

But oh, she was. That Lady would  _betray_  her like this! That she would unabashedly throw herself at a man she barely knew. A  _Lannister_  at that. No matter how different from his sister he appeared to be. No matter all the good things Tyrion spoke of him, or how honourable Brienne claimed he was. None of that mattered, because there were plenty of good and honourable people around, and Lady wasn’t throwing herself at  _them_.

It seemed that it only took Jaime a few days to get comfortable with his place at Winterfell. Comfortable enough that he had stopped hiding that smirk he got whenever Lady showcased her preference in front of her. Comfortable enough that he had tossed in a, “Now you go off to bed with your mistress. I know you’d much rather come with me, but she’s much more important. Do protect her.”

To Sansa’s total and utter indignation, of course.

“Ser  _Jaime_ , if you’re quite finished buttering up  _my_  wolf, you ought to think about getting some rest. I hear your training has been difficult, and you need all the strength you can muster.”

The man had straightened up and smirked at her, a hint of the previously arrogant golden boy she assumed he had been. “Lady Sansa, are you perhaps jealous?”

“Jealous!?”

“That’s what I said, yes.”

“ _Lady,”_  she snapped, more insistently, until the wolf walked back towards her. Jaw clenched, she met the man’s eyes. “Good  _night_ , Ser Jaime.”

With a whirl of her cloak, she turned around to leave, and she could’ve sworn she heard a laughing, “Goodnight, my Lady,” from behind her as she went.

–

Sansa tried to bargain.

“Will you tell me what it is? Am I not paying you enough attention?” Fingers carefully and gently stroking the wolf’s fur at night, the warmth of her large body over her making her feel impossibly hot. “I have duties to attend to now, Lady. Is this about that? What do you see in him?”

_What did she see in him?_

Smart as she was, Lady was still an animal, and she could hardly recognise that a man was handsome. Resentment or not, Sansa could admit that Jaime Lannister was still as handsome as she’d found him when they’d first crossed paths so many years ago. So what was the appeal of him? It kept her up for hours until she dozed off restlessly.

Still, Lady was relentless, and Sansa found herself becoming more and more aware of the Lannister’s presence, as if she herself was being attuned to him the way her wolf seemed to be. She walked into a room and sought him out at the same time Lady did. There was no prying her away from him now over supper, so she’d taken to sitting at his table, where little to nobody else would sit.

People talked, of course. How could they not? Lady had only ever had eyes for Sansa before this. And now here she was, like a common whore, curled at his feet.

“You’re wrong, you know,” Jaime told her conversationally on one of such occasions. “I briefly met your brother’s direwolf once. Robb’s. Almost tore my face off, if I remember correctly.”

Sansa’s eyes flitted between his face and her food. “You probably deserved it.”

A dry laugh. “Are you always so quick to judge, my lady?”

“A wolf’s instinct is never wrong.”

And Jaime was once again in her field of vision, looking thoroughly pleased with himself. “I suppose it’s a matter of time, then. Before you find me as charming as Lady clearly does.”

Sansa had not known how to respond to that.

–

The first battle rolled around sooner than they had all been expecting.

First, because when it was over, it was agreed that the numbers were low. Much too low. There would be more, they knew. They lost many good people. It appeared that everybody had been steeling themselves for this moment, that when it came around, nobody had the spirits to mourn.

There had been a moment, amidst the chaos of the night and the screams and distant sound of swords and shields clanging against each other, while Sansa waited with the other ladies in the Hall, that Lady had bristled.

She had been alert at her side the whole time up until then. And then, without warning, her muscles had gone taut, lip pulled back into a snarl and before Sansa could ask her what was wrong, she had taken off.

The desperate call of “Lady!” that Sansa had attempted had been futile, as she had expected it to be.

Dawn had risen, and Jon had stormed into the hall to announce their small victory, and asked for all hands to help with the wounded.

Jaime Lannister was wounded.

A leg cut, not too deep, nothing that couldn’t be wrapped up according to their Maester, and there was Lady, covered in mud and blood, refusing to leave his side.

“She came out of nowhere, my lady,” Brienne had told her when she’d gone to see him. “Ser Jaime had stepped in to cover my back when a wave of the dead came at us, and I saw him surrounded, falling off the wall. I was fending them off myself, and then your wolf – Lady – she was on them, ripping them apart and the last thing I saw was her dragging him away from the battle.

And gods, Sansa wished she could say she was surprised to hear this, that this was where Lady had leapt to when she’d left her, but no. For whatever reason, Lady had decided that Jaime Lannister was worth her love and protection.

What was Sansa to do but accept it?

Perhaps Lady knew something after all.

–

“I believe I owe your direwolf my life.”

Sansa looked up from the letter she’d been reading towards the door of her chambers, where Jaime stood, leg bandaged but otherwise looking healthy. “So I hear,” she responded, not even blinking as Lady stood up from her side to walk over to him and start licking at his hand.

Jaime stayed silent for a moment. “Does it bother you so much?” he asked after a while, and she found him looking at Lady.

This was not making her look good. Sansa heaved a sigh, pushing herself to her feet and walking over to them, letting her fingers scratch behind Lady’s ears slowly. “I’m happy she saved your life. I hear you were brave.”

Another silence, and Jaime turned his face up to her. After a beat, she did the same, and found her stomach leaping slightly, fingers stilling on Lady’s head.

“She’s a smart one. Too smart.” A nod, and a small hint of a smile. Sansa didn’t know if it was a bitter one or now. “She takes after you in a lot of ways.”

The compliment took Sansa by surprise. What was she to say to that?

She was saved from responding by Jaime continuing. “I hope you’ll learn to trust me, too.”

Without another word, he gave a curt nod and walked away, leaving her to wonder what on earth had just transpired between them.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> is this a chapter? let’s call it that. look at me, actually continuing a fic i said i’d continue c:

There had been loss.

Too much loss. The army of the dead were unyielding and incessant, and it seemed that no matter how much smoke went up in the air, how many shrieks faded into the vast darkness that surrounded them, more spawned in their place, as easily replaced as water in a river.

And as the dead went, so did the living.

Yohn Royce, Podrick Payne, The Hound, to name a few.

People who, at one point or another in her life, had changed it for the better. Had stepped up and protected her and aided her and were now gone because of a battle nobody wanted to fight but everybody had to.

It was with stony silence that she allowed Jon to address their troops, their folk, the lords and ladies holed up in Winterfell, feeling more bleak by the minute. With stony silence and composed air; she was the Lady of Winterfell.  _They will not see me break._

And so they didn’t.

 

But Arya–  _stupid_ , stubborn Arya, was insistent on going out into the fighting. Gods knew her sister was a trained killer nowadays, but she was still her sister, and Sansa felt utterly helpless as she stood back and let everybody she loved put their lives on the line.

It made something ugly and constricting claw its way up her throat as she walked into the sept; it felt colder these days. Colder than it had ever been, and she was shivering under the thick furs wrapped around her.

Sansa didn’t know how long she was in there, praying. Praying, and praying and praying, as if perhaps if she did it a thousand different ways, the Seven would hear her.

At some point, she started crying.

In the darkness and solace of the Winterfell sept – unused and unvisited by the Northerners – she allowed the tears to fall; she allowed herself to crumble where nobody would see her, where she didn’t have to be a pillar of strength for all who relied on her.

Lady had been with her. Sansa realised, as she looked up through bleary eyes to reach for her wolf’s fur, the comforting warmth much needed in this moment, that she’d left.

Even Lady had left.

Worn out and exhausted and with a knot in her throat, Sansa prayed through the tears until she couldn’t cry any longer and the sticky tracks down her cheeks were all that remained of her lapse in fortitude.

“Lady Sansa?”

She’d barely had time to look up at the sound of the voice when Lady reappeared next to her, to settle her head on her lap and look up at her with gentle eyes. As if she’d brought him with her. Sniffing back, Sansa praised the darkness as she glanced over her shoulder at Jaime Lannister. “Yes, Ser Jaime?”

A moment’s silence, before the sound of soft footsteps approached. “I thought perhaps some trouble might’ve befallen you. Lady was quite insistent in bringing me here.”

So she had. Sansa’s eyes flickered down to the wolf, accusing and questioning at the same time.  _Why him, Lady?_

“Some trouble has befallen all of us.” It was painfully evident in her voice that she’d been crying. She so wished she had a handkerchief on her.

As if reading her mind, the Kingslayer’s good hand extended out next to her, holding one. Pressing her lips together, Sansa looked up at him, face shrouded in darkness, silhouetted by the faint glow of the candles she’d lit. “Thank you,” she added quietly.

Jaime bowed his head and turned his body towards the statue of the Mother she’d been kneeling in front of. “You don’t pray to the Old Gods?”

“No,” she replied. “My mother raised us with a septa. The Old Gods were father’s realm.”

More silence. It seemed to etch on forever. Sansa felt restless in her own skin, fingers tangled up in Lady’s fur.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, with his face still turned away, Jaime Lannister said, “I know my word means nothing to you. But I am sorry... Sansa. For everything your family has suffered at the hands of mine.”

She stared up at his golden head, all she could see of him under the heavy furs he himself donned. He was  _sorry_. What was there to be sorry  _for?_  Or rather, how could one person be sorry for so  _much?_ Hadn’t he stood idly by while it all happened? Hadn’t he stood  _with_  Cersei through everything she’d done? Perhaps the Kingslayer himself didn’t have Stark blood on his hands, but he had been in the splash zone while everyone around him did.

So why didn’t she hate him?

Why did she  _respect_  him?

Taking a deep breath, Sansa patted Lady on the head and stood, watching as he turned to look at her, almost warily. “The time for condolences is long past, Ser Jaime.”

A shadow crept across his eyes, and his head lifted a fraction, as if to nod but thought better of it. “Perhaps you’re right,” he admitted, with a ghost of a smile at the corner of his lips. Not the arrogant sort she was used to seeing upon them. It looked like he wanted to say something else, but held back.

Lady stalked forward, as it never surprised her to see these days, and rubbed her head against Jaime’s side, until his hand fell to her head as well, scratching lightly. The image caused something to stir inside her. What did it mean, that Lady, her unfailing companion, who saw through everybody that meant her harm, behaved this way with him? As if she were  _loyal_ to him, when he’d never given her reason to be?

“She likes you,” Sansa pointed out, somewhat lamely, as if she’d given up on the matter.

It drew a soft laugh from under the thick beard the man had taken to wearing. “Yes, I’m lucky like that, it seems.”

 _You don’t know just how lucky._  “I believe you’re a man of your word. She must see it, too.”  _That, and something else. Something else she sees that I don’t._

The gold of his hand glowed in the candlelight, drawing her eyes to it. Lannister gold. The golden hand of who was once the best swordsman in the Seven Kingdoms. It must have weighed the weight of loss. The heaviest weight there was. After all, Sansa was well acquainted with it.

Jaime saw her staring at it and seemed to shift, uncomfortable. Feeling her face flush at being caught, Sansa folded the handkerchief and stepped up towards him to hold it out towards him.

Eyes dragging up from the piece of cloth to her face, Jaime placed his good hand at her fingers, allowing them to fold over it. “Keep it. It’s the most good I could do to you in coming; it might satisfy your wolf."

Nodding, Sansa took it back, forcing away from her mind the feeling of his hand over hers. Warm and steady. There was a moment of silent eye contact before she looked away. “No,” she added as she gathered her furs around her shoulders. “I appreciated the company.”

Without sparing another look at him, she turned, pleased to see that Lady followed. “Goodnight, Ser Jaime.”

–

“Brienne,” Sansa spoke up as they stood near a window, the large woman next to her, hand at the hilt of her sword

“Yes, my lady?”

She turned her face away from the Winterfell courtyard, where Jaime Lannister was knocking swords against the large redheaded wildling. He seemed to be losing. “You seem to know Jaime Lannister better than anybody here.” Brienne only stared at her, waiting for further question. “Lady’s quite taken with him,” she continued bitterly. “I don’t understand why. Perhaps you could shed some light on the situation.”

Brienne looked at the wolf in question with a frown before turning back to Sansa. “I wouldn’t pretend to understand how Lady behaves, my lady...”

“No,” Sansa agreed, toying with her sleeve. A thread was beginning to come loose. “No, but Lady is very particular about the people she trusts that way. She doesn’t even behave like that with my own brothers and sister. Nor with you... what makes him so special? He’s a Lannister.”

There was a momentary pause, in which Brienne also looked back to the window to where the man had been knocked back. “He was born a Lannister, that is true. I may be so bold as to say that is a burden he carries, not a trophy.”

The answer didn’t satisfy her. “You said he treated you honourably before. I know my mother freed him from Robb’s prison to try to exchange him for me. What has he done that’s redeemed him so?”

“He’s a good man, my lady. I would stake my life on that. The rumours that circle him leave some truth out of them. I believe Ser Jaime is someone who wants to do the right thing, and will find a way to do it.”

Yes. He had left his sister to join them up North, after all. Tyrion trusted him. So did Bran, and Brienne. And now Lady.

“He sent me to find you, you know,” Brienne continued. Sansa looked up at her questioningly. “At King’s Landing. He provided me with armour and this sword... made from your father’s sword, to use it to protect you.”

Sansa watched her for a moment, unsure, glancing back towards Jaime in the snow, shaking it out of his hair as he adjusted his left-handed grip on the other half of her father’s sword.

“He’s never mentioned that.”

Brienne gave her a small smile. “For all that he likes to boast about the things that don’t matter, Jaime Lannister is not the sort of man who seeks praise for the things that do.”

And Jaime Lannister chose that moment to swing his sword around and look up, meeting Sansa’s gaze out the window, and in that moment, her breath caught in her throat and she understood.


End file.
